We investigate cost-sharing mechanisms for scheduling cost-sharing games. We assume that the demand is general—that is, each player can be allocated one of several levels of service. We show how to design mechanisms for these games that are weakly group strategyproof, approximately...

In this paper, we study inventory pooling coalitions within a decentralized distribution system consisting of a manufacturer, a warehouse (or an integration center), and n retailers. At the time their orders are placed, the retailers know their demand distribution but do not know the exact value...

We study a competition of product customization between two branded firms by a game-theoretic approach. Firms produce products with two attributes: one attribute indicates a characteristic with regard to “function” or “design” of a product and the other indicates “taste” or...

In this paper we study the problem of patrolling a perimeter. The general situation considered here can correspond to different tactical problems and it is studied from the point of view of game theory. To put the ideas in a context we describe it as follows. An intruder seeks to carry out a...

A game with precedence constraints is a TU game with restricted cooperation, where the set of feasible coalitions is a distributive lattice, hence generated by a partial order on the set of players. Its core may be unbounded, and the bounded core, which is the union of all bounded faces of the...

We study the operational implications from competition in the provision of healthcare services, in the context of national public healthcare systems in Europe. Specifically, we study the potential impact of two alternative ways through which policy makers have introduced such competition: (i)...

Recently, several articles appeared on the location–design problem that firms face when entering a competing market. All use a Huff-like attraction model. We discuss the formulation of the base model, the different settings studied in the papers and summarise their findings.

In durable goods markets, many brand name manufacturers, including IBM, HP, Epson, and Lenovo, have adopted dual-channel supply chains to market their products. There is scant literature, however, addressing the product durability and its impact on players’ optimal strategies in a dual-channel...

In a recent paper, Hsieh and Liu (2010) consider quality investment and inspection strategies of one supplier and one manufacturer. They propose solutions of four non-cooperative game models with different degrees of information available about the players’ inspection sampling rates and...

Generalized characteristic functions extend characteristic functions of ‘classical’ TU-games by assigning a real number to every ordered coalition being a permutation of any subset of the player set. Such generalized characteristic functions can be applied when the earnings or costs of...